US Army News

[jemhouston]

Army is facing difficulty in manpower. They have found some 'errors' and are 'fixing the problem'. Interesting....

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ar ... -rcna81796

The BS is strong with this one.

[James1978]

Inside One of the Army's Most Chaotic Brigades
10 May 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

A commander accused of toxic leadership, triggering a monthlong investigation. Senior officers accused of sexual assault, alcohol abuse, keeping soldiers away from home to the point of breaking military rules, and racism.

The Army's 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade is facing potentially systemic problems with its leadership, a Military.com investigation has found.

"There is a lot of infighting here … not a lot of trust and certainly the least cohesive place I've been," one senior 5th SFAB officer told Military.com.

The brigade's commander, Col. Jonathan Chung, was suspended from his position as the head of 5th SFAB, headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, a month ago following accusations of counterproductive leadership. He'd been in command since July 2021.

The subsequent investigation confirmed those accusations and recommended that Chung be relieved of command, while outlining broader issues in the brigade, according to internal Army documents reviewed by Military.com.

"To an outside observer, [5th SFAB] consistently meets mission requirements and delivers results -- a point of pride expressed by multiple members of the unit," Brig. Gen. Michael Simmering, the investigating officer, said in his findings. "Internally, a significant portion of interviewed team members expressed a consistent fear of the commander, and many had a physical, visceral reaction when asked to speak about the overall command climate."

Simmering currently serves as the deputy commanding general of the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss, Texas.

The 5th SFAB is struggling with internal turmoil and generational strife, with some senior leaders in the organization concerned the Army did a poor job vetting soldiers in its haste to build a new organization that was supposed to be elite, stacking the ranks with poor performers with disciplinary baggage. Meanwhile, those top-heavy ranks, filled with mid level officers and noncommissioned officers, see their senior leaders as poor communicators, abrasive and unprofessional.

The organization, created in 2019, is supposed to be the tip of the spear, building relationships and training troops for allied powers in the Pacific amid increasing tensions with China.

Yet the all-volunteer brigade has lost more than 116 troops in the past two years, a staggering drop for a unit that's meant to only have about 800 soldiers, according to internal data. Soldiers interviewed blamed a combination of retention issues, service members getting in trouble and kicked out, and the Army doing a poor job pitching soldiers across the service about what SFABs do.

Military.com reviewed more than 30 official statements, given to investigators mostly from field-grade officers and command sergeants major, about Chung's conduct that detail growing pains and problems the brigade has faced since being stood up. The publication also interviewed two dozen soldiers who have worked with Chung over the past decade. Most were granted anonymity to avoid retaliation.

Also, Military.com reviewed dozens of internal Army emails, text messages, audio recordings and videos, as well as a 2021 5th SFAB command climate survey and internal data suggesting the brigade has a history of disciplinary issues and struggles with being perceived as a serious organization by U.S. partners. None of the content reviewed by Military.com was redacted.

The documents taken as a whole not only outline issues with Chung's leadership, but also reveal broader issues throughout the brigade. They also suggest a generational gap, wherein younger troops took particular exception to Chung's style.

The 5th SFAB did not make a senior leader available for an on-the-record interview ahead of this story's publication.

Chung did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

None of the soldiers interviewed by Army investigators or Military.com accused Chung of violating any laws, and there is no evidence he targeted troops based on race or gender.

"Bottom line, he's a direct leader, very involved," Command Sgt. Maj. Ryan Nagy of 2nd Battalion, 5th SFAB, told Military.com. "A lot of people probably aren't used to that."

SFABs were stood up by the Army between 2017 and 2020, with each brigade being regionally aligned with a different part of the world. The units are tasked with building relationships with U.S. partners, helping to build training programs, and developing connections between those units and the American military in case of war. The 5th SFAB's area of responsibility is the Pacific, where it works with partner nations such as Thailand, Mongolia and Indonesia.

Army investigators found that the 5th SFAB has a "divisive, generally poor command climate" that can be best described as "a divided organization with low morale created predominantly by the organizational leadership style of [Chung]."

"He would constantly belittle the staff, sometimes comparing us to children, and frequently telling us how screwed up we are," one Army officer told Military.com. "We might work 10 or 12 hours on something, only to be pulled into his office … sometimes for hours just for us to hear how terrible we are at our jobs."

The officer's account is consistent with those of most soldiers interviewed by Military.com and statements given to Army investigators. Soldiers painted a picture of Chung as a frenzied micromanager and would routinely scold troops for up to hours at a time over minor errors.

He also had nicknames for multiple officers he would use in front of others, according to the Army's investigation, calling one officer "Merit Based" and another "Rex," in reference to the dinosaur from "Toy Story." However, in his statement to investigators, Chung either denied he had nicknames for his subordinates or characterized them as one-off gags, according to the final report. On at least two occasions, field-grade officers sought behavioral health services they say were a direct result of their treatment from Chung. At one point, there was a personal Wi-Fi hot spot in the brigade named "5th SFAB = depression."

But the issues with 5th SFAB's leadership goes beyond Chung and the investigation into his leadership, with multiple disciplinary actions taken against senior leaders and numerous ongoing investigations and troubling behavior from the rank and file.

The investigation also dug up issues with the brigade's violations of temporary duty policy, or TDY, a mechanism for deploying soldiers on missions for 180 days or less. The investigation found systemic issues in which soldiers were returned home at the 179-day mark only to redeploy days later. Commanders can extend that time away from home through proper channels, though the investigation found those mechanisms weren't employed.

The investigation recommended that Col. Lucas Braxton, the deputy commander of 5th SFAB, face administrative action, which could range from a scolding to separation from the Army. The investigation concluded he orchestrated at least 23 violations, effectively denying soldiers the opportunity to rest and spend time with their families between missions.

"I'm not recommending anything … yet. Just want to get down to clarity [sic] on what options are on the table and what risk is being assumed. I'm prepared to argue either way," Braxton said in an email reviewed by Military.com in which he was asking subordinate commanders about effectively extending their deployments in violation of Army rules.

Braxton did not return a request for comment from Military.com.

However, 5th SFAB, a brigade of just under 700 troops, is overburdened by the Army with constant rotations abroad across multiple countries in the Pacific, according to troops who spoke to Military.com.

In a 2021 command climate survey for the brigade, in which soldiers can submit anonymous comments, respondents painted a bleak picture of the morale and behavior of 5th SFAB troops.

In one comment, a soldier said a staff sergeant "routinely" referred to his soldiers as "b---h" and "p---y," which "resulted in fights and yelling matches."

"Additionally, a member of the team carried a Confederate battle flag to Malaysia and has said the N-word on multiple occasions," the soldier added, though it was unclear to whom they were referring.

The brigade isn't alone in facing leadership issues, according to internal slides for a 5th SFAB two-day briefing reviewed by Military.com. They extend across the base where the brigade is headquartered, which includes 1-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team and 2nd Ranger Battalion, and the 1st Special Forces Group.

More than 90% of complaints involved equal opportunity, a category that includes bullying, using disparaging terms and sexist behavior involving senior leader misconduct. Half the time, the complaints were confirmed, with leaders removed from their positions. The slide does not specify a timeframe, nor provide overall complaint totals.

The base saw 26 informal sexual assault or harassment complaints and 44 formal complaints during fiscal 2022, the briefing detailed. There were also 11 letters of concern, two letters of reprimand and 40 Article 15 proceedings exclusively at 5th SFAB since June 2021.

A 5th SFAB spokesperson said the data was from an early document draft and was inaccurate, but did not provide the finalized version for context.

Col. Meghann Sullivan, commander of the 5th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 5th SFAB, is facing allegations of sexually assaulting at least two subordinate men and harassing several others, according to three sources with knowledge of the situation.

One source said she forcefully kissed one man and groped another in separate incidents that allegedly involved alcohol abuse. At least one of those incidents was allegedly witnessed by Chung, though it's unclear whether Sullivan faced disciplinary action. Sullivan was suspended this week, a spokesperson with the brigade confirmed to Military.com.

She did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

"Part of the problem is the previous command teams faced quickly standing up a new organization and putting bodies in slots," Command Sgt. Maj. Shelby Reed of 6th Battalion, 5th SFAB, told Military.com. "In doing so, I think we hired a lot of individuals that weren't mature enough to be here and weren't ready for the challenges.

"We had a lot of disciplinary issues," Reed added.

[James1978]

One wonders if the US Army could learn a thing or two from the British Army about the care of horses?

Arlington Horses Are Getting Improvements After Deaths. But Other Army Animals Also Face Poor Conditions, Review Found.
10 May 2023
Military.com | By Drew F. Lawrence

The Army said Wednesday it has a long-term plan to rehabilitate the horse platoon tasked with funeral services for fallen service members following the deaths of four animals last year.

But a recent service-wide Army review also found poor conditions for horses, mules and donkeys maintained at various facilities across the country -- the latest revelation following a May 1, 45-day suspension of the famous Arlington National Cemetery caisson platoon. The deaths in the caisson unit all occurred since February 2022.

The documents obtained Wednesday by Military.com via the Freedom of Information Act show images of apparently emaciated animals, some with chipped hooves and lesions from poor tack fitting. In some cases, the review also found poorly designed and dilapidated facilities peppered with safety issues like barrels of hydrochloric acid stored next to horse feed.

The Army created a task force to address the well-being of horses, mules and donkeys at 12 installations last year after troubles with horse health in the Arlington unit, also known as the Army Caisson Platoon of the 3rd Infantry Regiment, or the "Old Guard."

On Wednesday, the service unveiled a five-point plan for the suspended unit in an effort to improve the care and health of the horses, including reduction of the caisson weight that the horses have to pull and improvements to the fit of equipment to avoid injuries.

"The challenges we are facing in our caisson program jump from a number of cumulative issues resulting from a lack of adequate facilities, pasture space, diet and nutrition, and poor herd management that can date back many years since at least 2010," Maj. Gen. Allan M. Pepin, commanding general of the Military District of Washington, which is in charge of the Old Guard, told reporters Wednesday.

"Internally, it was an easy decision to make because it is the right decision to take care of the horses," Pepin added. "It's a difficult execution because now we have families that are affected by this decision -- but it's the right decision."

The service explained that 200 families of service members with planned funeral honors now have the option of services without the horses due to the suspension of the unit.

Army officials said that Arlington National Cemetery was able to contact 199 of the 200 affected families to inform them of the suspension. Only six so far have requested to reschedule. Those that do not reschedule will have their loved ones transported by a hearse car instead of a horse-led caisson, according to Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith.

But the caisson platoon is not the only Army unit on the hook for improvements.

The service keeps donkeys, mules and horses, referred to in a group as equids, that it uses for everything from pageantry-steeped traditions to training.

The servicewide review documents -- provided to Military.com by the Army the same day it announced the plan for the caisson unit -- show varying levels of care for the 267 Army equids housed across the country. The task force that performed the review was created in May 2022, a month after CNN reported issues happening in the caisson platoon.

Some, like the Fort Cavazos, Texas, herd, scored highly -- 86% or higher -- in categories that ranged from communication between leaders to feed quality to facility management.

Others, like Fort Gordon, Georgia, and Fort Polk, Louisiana -- which has only seven donkeys -- scored low, according to the Army's assessment, which was completed in November 2022 and did not define specific grading parameters.

The assessment included photos of "thin, poorly muscled" animals. However, it was unclear in the documents which units the pictures were from.

Other images showed barbed wire fencing around horse turnout areas, washed-out pastures, stalls with concrete floors that may be harmful to horse hooves, and a horse eating sawdust shavings due to "lack of appropriate nutrition and feed availability."

Some notes listed in the individual installation assessments -- which include West Point, Forts Carson, Gordon, Hood (now Cavazos), Huachuca, Irwin, Polk, Riley, Sill, Myer, Belvoir, and Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston -- showed positive comments like collaborative relationships between the veterinarians and leadership at Fort Irwin, for example.

Other notes were negative, and focused on more tangible issues affecting herds across the Army. Fort Riley's feed was stored next to chemicals, and the base had small stalls. There was a lack of runoff at Fort Sill's pasture sheds.

The waterers at Fort Belvoir's pasture were dirty and "too few," and rat poison was kept on top of donkey supplements at Fort Polk.

The documents -- and Army comments during a Wednesday press conference -- reveal a sometimes dwindling knowledge-base for animals that haven't been used widely across the U.S. Army since World War I, despite some limited utilization in modern wars such as special operations use of equines during the initial invasion of Afghanistan.

The 28-page assessment listed "enterprise-wide" issues that showed horses taking a back seat in funding, feed and leadership attention. The assessment listed poor communication; inattentiveness to veterinary care and welfare expertise; a lack of feed and nutrition knowledge; unresolved facility inspection findings; and "dangerous or inappropriate" facilities.

One item the assessment pointed to as a primary issue for the management of horses was the lack of a Pentagon-wide policy or doctrine used to manage horses.

"There were areas and gaps in the execution of appropriate herd management, feed and nutrition, ability to have the right facilities -- potentially in some locations because they were in older locations that needed to be upgraded," Army Veterinary Corps Chief and Task Force Military Working Equids lead Col. Deborah Whitmer said Wednesday.

"All of these issues … were found in various locations to one extent or another," Whitmer said.

For the caisson platoon, the review documents come after months of trying to fix the issue. Leadership told reporters Wednesday that the unit has hired a new herd manager, improved feed quality, and received $15 million in funding from Congress.

The unit has struggled with space for its now 49-horse herd -- a 27% decrease, as some have been adopted out of the unit since last February -- which were confined to under 10 acres until the unit began rotating some to plots in Lorton, Virginia.

Now, the Army is eyeing 50 acres for the caisson herd, according to Pepin.

The Army originally told Military.com last month that the suspension of the caisson unit was a temporary pause that will be "conditions-based, and will not impact military honors, dependent honors services or any other military funeral honors elements," according to a statement from a service spokesperson.

The service also said in April it was looking into alternative "horse-drawn conveyances."

[James1978]

Army error means hundreds of pilots owe 3 more years of service, some threaten lawsuit
By Corey Dickstein
Stars and Stripes • May 9, 2023

An Army human resources error that will force hundreds of aviation officers to stay in the service three more years is drawing backlash, including a lawsuit threat, from some pilots who thought they were nearing the end of their time in the military.

Army Human Resources Command said in a statement that it had made errors in aviation officers’ personnel files and it was working to ensure pilots understand precisely how much more time that they must serve on active duty. The issue was caused by incorrect dates that command personnel added to some pilots’ personnel files, which indicated they could leave the Army three years earlier than their contractual agreements state, service officials said.

“We acknowledge that there were errors in information placed in the Assignment Interactive Module Portal from representatives of the Human Resources Command,” said Lt. Col. Allie Scott, a spokeswoman for the command. “We know that service includes both soldiers and their families. We also understand the importance of early communication to inform career and life choices. HRC will continue to review and apply statutory, contractual, and regulatory obligations to determine the length of an individual’s service obligation.”

The problem came to light after some aviation officers who commissioned in about 2015 were denied their requests for release from active duty late last year, even though their personnel files indicated they were eligible, said Lt. Gen. Douglas Stitt, the Army’s personnel chief. Human Resources Command personnel reviewed aviation officers’ files and found some 600 pilots likely believed they owed three fewer years of active-duty service than they might have thought because of the unique service obligations for aviators, he said.

While all officers sign contracts upon commissioning that state they owe a certain number of years of active-duty time, pilots also owe additional time after they complete flight school. All Army pilots who entered the military before 2020 must serve six years after graduating flight training, but some officers also owe an additional three years, service officials said. Those who have entered the service since 2021 owe 10 years of service after they complete flight training, according to the Army.

Those impacted by the mistake are officers who commissioned into the aviation field via the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., or through ROTC and selected aviation as their branch of choice via the Branch of Choice Active Duty Service Obligation, or BRADSO. That BRADSO contract includes the additional three years of service obligation for aviation officers, Scott said.

Many pilots believed those three years of additional service ran concurrently with their six-year flight school obligation, said an Army aviator who commissioned in 2017 and has been informed he owes three more years of service. Army officials, including Stitt, argued the BRADSO contracts “clearly state” the additional three-year obligation, which means those officers owe the Army nine years after flight school.

“It was news to me,” said the aviator, a captain who flies Black Hawk helicopters and commissioned via ROTC. The pilot, who still owes more than six years to the Army, spoke on condition of anonymity to describe his situation without official Army approval.

The pilot said he knew of several other aviators with BRADSO contracts who were released from the service after meeting their six-year, flight-school obligations, and he had been discussing his options with his family.

The Army said some 190 pilots probably were approved to leave active-duty service before fulfilling their BRADSO requirements. The Army does not plan to call those former pilots back to active duty, Scott said.

The pilot said he now feels like he has misled his spouse about their options because he is required to serve longer than he believed. It has harmed his trust in the service and its leadership, he said.

“You feel like the Army has kind of stabbed you in the back,” the pilot said. “A lot of people caught up in this have a lot tougher situations — they’ve found their civilian-side work or bought a house where they want to settle or whatever. For me, it’s just kind of crushing an option I thought was there.”

He said he probably would not attempt to leave the service before his extra three years are up. But he said the misunderstanding would make coming to work — and most likely deploying overseas — more difficult.

“It seems like they’re trying to kill morale,” the pilot said.

The error has come to light as the Army is struggling with its recruiting amid a difficult recruiting environment for the entire military. While retention numbers have remained high, the military has long struggled to keep pilots in its ranks and away from high-paying commercial aviation jobs. That was part of the reason — along with the high costs to train pilots — that the service in 2020 moved to a 10-year service obligation after flight school, officials said.

Some of the officers caught up in the error have threatened legal action. In an anonymous letter “sent on behalf of over 170 active-duty Army aviators" to Maj. Gen. Tom Drew, commander of Human Resources Command, a group calling itself “The Future of Army Aviation" wrote they were considering hiring a "prominent" attorney to resolve the matter in court.

“It is a shared view that unethically retaining officers against their will does not increase readiness or bolster retention and recruiting efforts, rather it harms the institution [the Army] and our nation,” these pilots wrote.

Scott said the Army was aware of the letter.

“The Army continues to work with stakeholders and affected soldiers on this issue,” she said.

Scott also said the Army was continuing to review the issue and expects to complete a full audit of the service obligation issue by July.

While the impacted pilots contractually owe nine years of service beyond flight school, Stitt said the service would take an individualized approach to evaluating those who do request separation from the Army before their commitments are officially complete.

“I'll treat all of these on a case-by-case basis … with compassion and empathy,” the general said. “It's not like, ‘Well, you said three years. So, it's three years,’ like it's a prison sentence. I want to do the right thing for these soldiers and families and the right thing for the Army. That’s my methodology as I go forward.”

So over 170 aviators are threatening to hire a lawyer to seek a remedy in court. Has anything like this occurred before?

[Poohbah]

This reeks of someone desperately trying to stem the outflow of pilots and simply finding new ways to enrage EVERYONE.

The timing on finding this is suspect. If they were auditing records properly, they would've found at least two or three of these errors early on, and that would be a demand signal for "Check everyone in this category IMMEDIATELY."

Instead, it got sat on until people were trying to leave.

[David Newton]

I'd say that there's likely a good argument to say that they're estopped from changing the terms. In other words their conduct and behaviour has created a reasonable expectation that the original separation times could be relied upon and to change things now would be contrary to the principles of justice and equity.

[jemhouston]

They only people who will profit from this are the lawyers. The Army (and the Marines for Cyber) managed to hack off the pilots they need. They'll tell people to avoid the Army.

[James1978]

I'd be interested on hearing Mike's take on this.

Army starts no-penalty purge of ‘ineffective’ recruiters
By Davis Winkie
May 11, 2023

As the military struggles to meet its recruiting targets, which the Army will miss again this year, the service’s recruiting chief issued a directive Friday standardizing recent changes to how it removes underperformers.

The memo from Army Recruiting Command’s Maj. Gen. Johnny Davis implemented recent changes to the Army regulation governing how recruiters are assigned to — and, if necessary, removed from — recruiting duty. Command officials did not immediately respond to emailed questions from Army Times about the memo, which has circulated on social media in recent days.

One of the biggest changes: the command will remove “ineffective” recruiters without giving them a negative evaluation, including both permanent 79R recruiters and those involuntarily selected by the Army for temporary tours. Under the previous regulation, recruiting commanders had the discretion to slap failed Army-selected recruiters with “relief for cause” evaluations that could torpedo the recipient’s career, regardless of their competence in their primary specialty.

The full U.S. Army Recruiting Command memo

The memo defined “ineffective recruiters” as those who have been assigned to the command for at least a year but have signed two or fewer recruits since October. Davis noted that each recruiter assigned to a production role, which comes with extra pay, is responsible for “at least” one contract per month.

Recruiting leaders must counsel and offer remedial training to substandard recruiters before tagging them as ineffective and involuntarily reassigning them, according to the regulation.

Davis said that over the next 90 days, the command will “immediately” reassign ineffective recruiters who received the required counseling and training but haven’t improved. Army-selected recruiters who haven’t received the paperwork necessary to justify the ineffective designation “will be offered voluntary reassignment outside of the [recruiting] command, without a negative [evaluation],” he added.

Recruiters who haven’t produced contracts “through no fault of their own” won’t face reassignment, the memo said. Such reasons could include non-recruiting temporary duty assignments, medical leave, parental leave or holding a role that requires voluminous administrative work such as commanding a large recruiting station.

The move to boot non-performers off recruiting duty comes amid efforts to transform how the service selects, trains and assigns recruiting personnel.

One effort is a special assignment battery that can help officials assess whether a noncommissioned officer is a better fit for recruiting duty or drill sergeant duty, two of the main involuntary assignments that many staff sergeants find themselves selected for.

But the new regulation also eased some assignment eligibility qualifications, reducing the required general technical (GT) and skilled-technical test score requirements from 95 points to 90 points. Soldiers who have a GED rather than a high school diploma are now also eligible for recruiting duty, regardless of college credits.

The top general for Training and Doctrine Command, Gen. Gary Brito, told Army Times in March that the Army’s recruiting school is undergoing an “overhaul” and has changed its curriculum to include an expanded real-world exercise and lessons about the practical implications of living farther away from a military installation.

New recruiters may be better aligned with places they and their families are comfortable living and working, Davis said in recent remarks at an Association of the U.S. Army event.

“We want [recruiters] to be allowed to be part of the assignment process of where they go,” the recruiting general said. “We want the families to be involved.”

[James1978]

Soldiers under ‘enormous strain,’ warns Army’s top enlisted leader
By James Clark
May 12, 2023

Even though America’s longest war has drawn to an end, soldiers continue to face a breakneck operational tempo, and for the time being, there seems to be little chance of respite as the Army is left short-handed amid a recruiting crisis.

“We have an enormous strain on soldiers,” Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston said earlier this month. “We’re busier now than we ever have been.”

The Army’s top enlisted leader recently issued the dire warning at the Fires Symposium in Lawton, Oklahoma, calling current strains on personnel a “huge concern” for him, according to a release by the Association of the United States Army.

The high operations tempo, coupled with the shrinking size of the force, means that soldiers are being asked to do more with less.

For the second year in a row, the Army missed its target recruiting goal. According to AUSA, the Army’s projected strength for fiscal year 2024 is roughly 951,800 soldiers, counting active duty, Guard and Reserve. That total marks a 20% decrease from the service’s end strength in 2022.

Contrary to claims that the U.S. military has scaled back its operational tempo during what has been branded as peacetime — a claim that overlooks the risks shouldered by service members still serving in combat zones, like Iraq and Syria — American soldiers find themselves deploying regularly for missions abroad as well as at home.

There are advise and assist deployments in Iraq and Syria, some of which rely on detachments with unique capabilities, such as air artillery defense units. At home, the Army and National Guard have been called upon to serve as duct-tape fixes for everything from the COVID response to support at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The link of everything we’ve done has been the Army,” Grinston said, according to the release. “Whether it’s COVID, hurricanes, forest fires, Russia, Ukraine, all the way to what we’re doing today. That’s why, again, I’m concerned about our optempo.”

The tempo may be grueling, but soldiers continue to meet the high expectations set before them, Grinston added.

“We’ve never said no,” Grinston said of the Army. “I’ve watched these soldiers, year after year, they’ve said, ‘Yes, I’ll go do that.’”

Grinston’s remarks at the Fires Symposium come on the heels of another conversation in which he raised workload concerns of the average soldier. In April, Grinston told Military.com’s Steve Beynon “the average citizen doesn’t know how stressful this is on our families. I think it has been an incredible strain on our soldiers and our families.”

Ahead of a deployment overseas, soldiers must meet a series of requirements before even beginning pre-deployment training. Individual tasks may only take a day here or there, but they pile up. This period is followed by a month-long pre-deployment training evolution — often hosted at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, or the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana — that may be further augmented by unit-level exercises specific to select commands or career fields.

Atop the pre-deployment period, personnel must meet unit-level logistical requirements, individual preparations for necessary armor and gear, screenings, staffing and so on. Finally, when every task has been completed, the deployment and all the rigors and risks that come with it await.

Soldiers eventually return home and are afforded a breather, albeit brief, before doing it all over again. With manpower issues looming and a tempo that won’t slow, it remains to be seen whether this cadence is sustainable — not just for the Army, but for those who fill its ranks.

[James1978]

Army Pilots Are Flying Way Less, as Fatal Incidents Pile Up

12 May 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

Army helicopter pilots are flying significantly less than they were a decade ago, according to data reviewed by Military.com, as the service grapples with a string of recent deadly incidents.

Since 2012, flight hours across the Army's top three helicopter platforms have dipped dramatically. Flight time with the Apache has dropped about 50%; Chinook pilots have 36% less time in the air; and the Black Hawk, the service's premier workhorse, is flying 25% less.

Much of that dip in flight time is attributable to the Global War on Terror winding down, with combat operations slowing down and a commensurate dip in training time. The Army did not provide an aviation expert or senior leader in that field for an on-the-record interview for this story.

But that decline has coincided with a surge in recent deadly helicopter accidents.

Last month, Gen. James McConville, the Army's top officer, ordered a safety stand-down following back-to-back high-profile helicopter crashes: one involving two Black Hawks that killed nine 101st Airborne Division troops and another in Alaska in which three soldiers were killed and a fourth injured when two AH-64 Apaches collided. Aviation units were tasked with reviewing maintenance of their crafts and going over safety procedures.

The crash in March involving the 101st Airborne was one of the deadliest non-combat incidents in the Army's history and, while it's unclear what caused it, it is one of many fatal helicopter crashes outside of a war zone in the past decade leading to new scrutiny on whether the service's helicopters are safe and its pilot training adequate.

"If we have known issues with certain helicopters, we need to know so we can resource your Department in a manner that protects the lives of our brave women and men in uniform," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this month. The letter requested further info on recent issues with helicopters, including total figures for incidents and whether there were any common themes to the causes.

Army officials have said that they don't see a connection between flight hours and accidents.

"The overall reduction in rotary-wing flying hours executed over the past decade is directly attributable to the drawdown in overseas contingency operations executed in Iraq and Afghanistan during that period," Jason Waggoner, a service spokesperson, said in a statement to Military.com. "The Army has not identified any correlation between flight hours and accidents. The Army's manned aviation accident rate steadily declined over the past decade as flight hours executed also declined."

The Army National Guard also has had a large number of incidents over the past decade, with 45 serious crashes killing 28 Guardsmen, according to an April report from the Government Accountability Office. In addition to missions overseas in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the Guard also heavily uses helicopters on domestic missions in disaster relief and search and rescue, which governors have increasingly relied on.

Amongst other incidents, two Tennessee National Guard soldiers died in a Black Hawk crash in February; a 2021 Black Hawk crash killed three New York Guardsmen; and a 2015 Black Hawk crash killed four Lousiana Guard soldiers and seven Marines.

The report found significant issues in the National Guard, particularly a lack of flight hours among its pilots, who need a minimum of 6.77 hours a month, with nine hours being considered optimal. Between 2017 and 2019, the bulk of Guard pilots flew around five hours per month.

The service is still compiling findings for its aviation stand-down, which ended May 5 for active-duty units and is still in effect for the National Guard until the end of the month. The stand-down grounded aircraft until the units completed maintenance and safety reviews.

[James1978]

Another Senior Officer Fired at One of the Army's Most Troubled Bases
15 May 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

A battalion commander with the 1st Cavalry Division based at Fort Cavazos, Texas, was fired after an investigation found he was unqualified to command, Army officials told Military.com.

Lt. Col. Damasio Davila was relieved from his position commanding the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, at the installation formerly known as Fort Hood on April 26, after being in command since June 2021.

The firing comes after a series of high-profile suspensions and questionable conduct among senior officers across the service, particularly at Fort Cavazos. The base also became the center of a national scandal and spurred the Army to overhaul its criminal investigation divisions following the 2020 murder of Spc. Vanessa Guillén.

Military.com reported in April that a private had died by suicide at the base just a month earlier after telling her family she had been sexually harassed -- and a second female soldier died by suicide on the same day, but the Army remained mum.

Davila was relieved due to "loss of trust in his ability to command," Lt. Col. Jennifer Bocanegra, a division spokesperson, said but declined to provide any additional information about the investigation. The reasons for Davila's removal could range from general misconduct to criminal action.

Stars and Stripes was the first to report on his firing.

Lt. Col. Patrick Merriss, an armor officer and Iraq war veteran, assumed command of the battalion last week.

Col. Jon Meredith was also fired from his role as commander of 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division in October. The previous commander, Col. Michael Schoenfeldt, was fired for bullying staff in April 2021 during the unit's deployment in Europe.

Meredith, who faces a court-martial, is charged with two counts of abusive sexual contact and two counts of conduct unbecoming of an officer, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

His wife, Col. Ann Meredith, was also terminated in January from her role as the commander of the 89th Military Police Brigade, which is also based at Fort Cavazos.

Fort Cavazos was renamed this month as part of a military-wide initiative to scrub Confederate names from bases and property. Since Guillén's death, the base has struggled with controversy.

In December 2020, after a review sparked by her murder, more than a dozen officials with the base were suspended or fired. The Army's damning Fort Hood Report found systemic issues with command including failures with guaranteeing the safety of soldiers, particularly women.

In that same year, at least 39 soldiers at the base died or went missing, according to reporting from Vanity Fair.

[Poohbah]

Another Senior Officer Fired at One of the Army's Most Troubled Bases
15 May 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

A battalion commander with the 1st Cavalry Division based at Fort Cavazos, Texas, was fired after an investigation found he was unqualified to command, Army officials told Military.com.

Lt. Col. Damasio Davila was relieved from his position commanding the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, at the installation formerly known as Fort Hood on April 26, after being in command since June 2021.

The firing comes after a series of high-profile suspensions and questionable conduct among senior officers across the service, particularly at Fort Cavazos. The base also became the center of a national scandal and spurred the Army to overhaul its criminal investigation divisions following the 2020 murder of Spc. Vanessa Guillén.

Military.com reported in April that a private had died by suicide at the base just a month earlier after telling her family she had been sexually harassed -- and a second female soldier died by suicide on the same day, but the Army remained mum.

Davila was relieved due to "loss of trust in his ability to command," Lt. Col. Jennifer Bocanegra, a division spokesperson, said but declined to provide any additional information about the investigation. The reasons for Davila's removal could range from general misconduct to criminal action.

Stars and Stripes was the first to report on his firing.

Lt. Col. Patrick Merriss, an armor officer and Iraq war veteran, assumed command of the battalion last week.

Col. Jon Meredith was also fired from his role as commander of 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division in October. The previous commander, Col. Michael Schoenfeldt, was fired for bullying staff in April 2021 during the unit's deployment in Europe.

Meredith, who faces a court-martial, is charged with two counts of abusive sexual contact and two counts of conduct unbecoming of an officer, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

His wife, Col. Ann Meredith, was also terminated in January from her role as the commander of the 89th Military Police Brigade, which is also based at Fort Cavazos.

Fort Cavazos was renamed this month as part of a military-wide initiative to scrub Confederate names from bases and property. Since Guillén's death, the base has struggled with controversy.

In December 2020, after a review sparked by her murder, more than a dozen officials with the base were suspended or fired. The Army's damning Fort Hood Report found systemic issues with command including failures with guaranteeing the safety of soldiers, particularly women.

In that same year, at least 39 soldiers at the base died or went missing, according to reporting from Vanity Fair.

Apparently, the name change didn't improve the situation.

[Rocket J Squrriel]

Army Pilots Are Flying Way Less, as Fatal Incidents Pile Up

12 May 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

Army helicopter pilots are flying significantly less than they were a decade ago, according to data reviewed by Military.com, as the service grapples with a string of recent deadly incidents.

Since 2012, flight hours across the Army's top three helicopter platforms have dipped dramatically. Flight time with the Apache has dropped about 50%; Chinook pilots have 36% less time in the air; and the Black Hawk, the service's premier workhorse, is flying 25% less.

Much of that dip in flight time is attributable to the Global War on Terror winding down, with combat operations slowing down and a commensurate dip in training time. The Army did not provide an aviation expert or senior leader in that field for an on-the-record interview for this story.

But that decline has coincided with a surge in recent deadly helicopter accidents.

Last month, Gen. James McConville, the Army's top officer, ordered a safety stand-down following back-to-back high-profile helicopter crashes: one involving two Black Hawks that killed nine 101st Airborne Division troops and another in Alaska in which three soldiers were killed and a fourth injured when two AH-64 Apaches collided. Aviation units were tasked with reviewing maintenance of their crafts and going over safety procedures.

The crash in March involving the 101st Airborne was one of the deadliest non-combat incidents in the Army's history and, while it's unclear what caused it, it is one of many fatal helicopter crashes outside of a war zone in the past decade leading to new scrutiny on whether the service's helicopters are safe and its pilot training adequate.

"If we have known issues with certain helicopters, we need to know so we can resource your Department in a manner that protects the lives of our brave women and men in uniform," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin earlier this month. The letter requested further info on recent issues with helicopters, including total figures for incidents and whether there were any common themes to the causes.

Army officials have said that they don't see a connection between flight hours and accidents.

"The overall reduction in rotary-wing flying hours executed over the past decade is directly attributable to the drawdown in overseas contingency operations executed in Iraq and Afghanistan during that period," Jason Waggoner, a service spokesperson, said in a statement to Military.com. "The Army has not identified any correlation between flight hours and accidents. The Army's manned aviation accident rate steadily declined over the past decade as flight hours executed also declined."

The Army National Guard also has had a large number of incidents over the past decade, with 45 serious crashes killing 28 Guardsmen, according to an April report from the Government Accountability Office. In addition to missions overseas in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the Guard also heavily uses helicopters on domestic missions in disaster relief and search and rescue, which governors have increasingly relied on.

Amongst other incidents, two Tennessee National Guard soldiers died in a Black Hawk crash in February; a 2021 Black Hawk crash killed three New York Guardsmen; and a 2015 Black Hawk crash killed four Lousiana Guard soldiers and seven Marines.

The report found significant issues in the National Guard, particularly a lack of flight hours among its pilots, who need a minimum of 6.77 hours a month, with nine hours being considered optimal. Between 2017 and 2019, the bulk of Guard pilots flew around five hours per month.

The service is still compiling findings for its aviation stand-down, which ended May 5 for active-duty units and is still in effect for the National Guard until the end of the month. The stand-down grounded aircraft until the units completed maintenance and safety reviews.

Terminalcwo had reports describing the recent 'safety standdown' being focused on everything but safety. Lots of doing office paper work, briefings on cars/hummers, etc. Sounds like they had an Apache accident the other night but no one died. Inexperienced pilots lost control in high wind, crashed, rolled, but survived.

[James1978]

US Army preps for fresh mobile communications experiment
By Colin Demarest
May 16, 2023

FORT MYER, Va. — The U.S. Army is planning a second experiment where the latest networking technologies will be tested for potential outfitting aboard armored vehicles.

The assessment, known formally as the Armored Formation Network On-The-Move Pilot, is scheduled for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, and will likely happen at Fort Bliss, Texas, according to John Gillette, the product manager for mission network at the Army’s Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, or PEO C3T.

Armored formations now lack the connectivity Army leaders want, and network modernization is among the service’s top priorities as it prepares for potential large-scale conflicts with China in the Indo-Pacific or Russia in Europe.

Armor often can’t afford to stop — or stop for too long, lest be targeted — and runs the risk of digitally disconnecting as it thunders across the landscape. The heavy-duty machinery also presents unique challenges to designers, integrators and crew: Tight quarters make every inch precious, power consumption needs to be balanced, and constant rumbles and vibration require rugged hardware.

The upcoming on-the-move pilot will ultimately help “outfit the armored units” as well as inform the next wave of development, Gillette said at an event this month at Fort Myer, Virginia. Future equipment, he added, will be “a lot simpler and a lot more resilient, and then also lighter on the vehicle.” PEO C3T is moving away from what were known as capability sets, batches of upgraded equipment rolled out every other year, to what is now recognized as the “division as a unit of action network design,” meant to address the Army’s 2030 and 2040 goals.

The initial on-the-move experimentation was done in early 2022, at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Bundles of equipment were distributed for evaluation at the time, with soldier feedback indicating that the new gear significantly improved the ability to move and communicate quickly, C4ISRNET reported.

“We took an armored brigade and we outfitted three companies with three different solution sets. The intent there was to inform us on what types of technologies would work, but not to do a downselect,” Gillette said. “We started out with the legacy vehicles, the M1068. Our objective vehicle is the AMPV, or the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, the command post variant.”

BAE Systems-made AMPVs were in March delivered to the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart.

The vehicles share common components with the Army fleet, including Bradleys and howitzers. The Army expected to buy 197 AMPVs in 2024, when combining base budget and supplemental funding.

[James1978]

As Army Launches Recruiting Drive in Cities, One Recruiter Lays Out the Challenges
Potential recruits aren’t worried about Army emphasis on diversity, despite Republican concerns.
By Sam Skove
May 17, 2023

Army Sgt. Mena Ibrahim wasn’t thrilled when he was reassigned from truck-driving to recruiting, a famously challenging assignment.

“I was actually very upset,” Ibrahim said. “Stepping outside of your bubble is extremely stressful.”

But after three years as a recruiter, he has learned to love the job: figuring out what it takes to get young people to sign up for military service in Washington, D.C., a city at the core of an ambitious Army plan to bounce back from a steep recruiting slump.

One thing Ibrahim isn’t seeing: potential recruits who say they’re concerned that the Army is overly liberal or “woke.” (Republican lawmakers say such concerns dampen recruiting; Army leaders say there’s no evidence that’s true.) Instead, Ibrahim said, young people worry about discrimination in the ranks, dying in combat, and committing several years of their lives.

The Army is hoping to recruit 65,000 new soldiers this year, 5,000 over their last year’s goal of 60,000. The service fell short of that goal by 25 percent, but is hoping a new ad campaign, recruitment incentives, and a focus on 15 key cities, including the nation’s capital, will help improve this year’s numbers.

Army leaders have gotten in on the act. “We really need young people to serve,” said Army Secretary Christine Wormuth on Monday, speaking at an enlistment ceremony in Baltimore Monday.

But even Wormuth concedes that the Army is likely to miss this year’s goal as well. “We are doing everything we can to get as close to it as possible, but we are going to fall short,” she told Congress in May.

The top barriers have long been a fear of death, the potential for post-traumatic stress, and distance from friends and family, Army surveys have shown. Other concerns include discrimination, distrust of Army leaders, and a feeling that service meant putting life on hold, according to one Army survey from February 2023.

Concerns about “woke-ism” ranked much lower, at just 5 percent across all geographic markets, the Army’s survey said. Ibrahim said no recruits had expressed concerns that the Army was overly promoting racial or sexual diversity, nor had the issue come up in his unit’s planning sessions.

Ibrahim, who emigrated from Egypt as a 13-year-old with poor English skills, sees difference as an asset to the military. “I believe our strongest weapon is diversity,” he said.

If anything, Ibrahim must work to convince recruits that they won’t be discriminated against. Drawing on his own experience deploying to Afghanistan, he soothes potential recruits by telling them that in the field, “it doesn't matter what the color of their skin is, their worship, preference, their sexual preference.”

Ibrahim must also face down questions from parents that their children will be sent immediately into combat. The questions are particularly sensitive for poorer residents of D.C., who imagine the Army simply wants to use them to fight wars. “It's a whole entire combination of minute little bad images,” Ibrahim said.

Urban environments also bring unique problems, Ibrahim said. D.C.’s recruiting pool consists largely of wealthy individuals who are harder to attract, or poor residents who face challenges qualifying for service.

Ibrahim called out D.C.’s education system; he said it fails to prepare potential recruits to pass Army assessment tests.

The Army as a whole has recognized the problem, and is expanding courses focused on boosting otherwise promising recruits’ test and physical scores.

Washington, D.C.’s legalization of marajuana is also a problem, Ibrahim said. The Army can issue waivers to those who have used the drug in the past, but recruits must battle social influences to stop smoking, Ibrahim said.

“Mom and Dad already smoke, right?” he said, “It's very, very hard to break away from that.”

Still, urban environments offer some advantages, the recruiter said. D.C. constantly has some sort of event going on, allowing him to meet the public at baseball and football games, and even at the annual Cherry Blossom festival.

The biggest incentive to join, though, isn’t hard to figure out, he said: it’s the chance to make money and relieve financial problems. Ibrahim’s experience echoes what Army surveys show. One spring 2022 study showed that 46 percent of respondents polled said that they’d consider joining the Army for financial reasons, and 44 percent said to pay for higher education.

Ibrahim knows the issue well himself.

After entering Rutgers on a full-ride soccer scholarship, he lost his scholarship when he was injured. Faced with high out-of-state tuition and needing money to help his future wife pursue her goals, he chose to join the Army and use their student loan repayment program to pay his tuition.

Army bonuses for signing also help drive referrals, and can attract highly qualified applicants. High tuition for university in particular has helped the Army attract soldiers for its military intelligence speciality, he said.

The money the Army can offer is “huge,” Ibrahim said. “A lot of these kids don’t have anything. It gives them a start.”

[James1978]

Nearly 1 in 3 Female Recruits Were Injured in Army Basic Training Last Year

18 May 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

Women are at least twice as likely as men to be injured in Army basic training, according to data collected over six years by the service.

Most of those injuries were musculoskeletal -- meaning they affect the bones, muscles, joints and tendons of female recruits. Military.com obtained the injury data as the Army is looking for ways to boost recovery for men and women moving through boot camp.

During 2022, nearly 30% of female recruits were injured on average each month during Army basic training. The average was 23% per month between 2017 and 2022, the data shows. During those years, about 12% of male recruits were injured each month.

The gap between male and female injuries in Army basic training isn't unique to the military.

Female athletes are also typically more prone to injury compared to their male counterparts, with women being more likely to receive bone and knee ligament injuries and stress fractures, according to a 2018 study published in the Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation medical journal. Part of that is due to women having smaller bones and less muscle mass.

Prior data also identified injury disparities among recruits based on where they come from within the U.S. Recruits from the South were among the most likely to be injured in basic training.

Researchers found that 34% of the Army's 99,335 trainees in 2017 sustained at least one musculoskeletal injury. Half of those injured were from eight states -- Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and North Carolina, according to a December 2022 study published in the Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases medical journal.

The South has the highest prevalence of obesity, something researchers have associated with a cluster of risk factors including restrictions on high-quality fitness facilities, health care and healthy food. Large swaths of the South also have relatively low household incomes, putting easy access to fitness training and healthy foods even further out of reach.

Overall, the Army, like the other services, is struggling to find recruits who can make the cut and pass the physically grueling basic training. Teens who are the prime recruiting demographic are becoming less physically active, creating a significant challenge for the Army.

Youth sports are also becoming less popular, and nearly half of Americans 12 to 21 years old are not physically active on a regular basis, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To improve boot camp performance, the Army started offering one nutrition bar per day to basic trainees in 2018. Those bars are high in calcium and vitamin D, which help with bone strength, and have about 12 grams of protein.

The service also started fielding more athletic trainers in 2020, including physical therapists and strength coaches, to Fort Moore, Georgia, which was previously known as Fort Benning. That base is where the service trains its ground combat troops, including infantry and cavalry scouts. Trainers were also placed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

Meanwhile, the Army in recent years has dramatically overhauled how it conducts physical training generally. That includes specific fitness tests to measure whether an applicant is qualified for certain jobs in the force, placing a greater emphasis on recovery, and boosting overall fitness standards within its formations.

But the service also balked at further changes to its new physical fitness test -- the Army Combat Fitness Test, or ACFT, after numerous revisions. That test is much more complicated than its predecessor and is largely seen as a better measurement of a soldier's athletic ability. Like other fitness tests before it, the ACFT has different scoring standards based on age and gender.

Congress passed a law pressing the Army to create gender-neutral fitness standards, but did not specify those standards have to be through the ACFT. Secretary Christine Wormuth said last month the service already has appropriate standards in place.

In 2017, the Army implemented the Occupational Physical Assessment Test, or OPAT, an entry fitness test for new recruits. Performance on the test, which includes measuring how far a recruit can jump, throw a ball and how much they can deadlift, dictates what job a recruit is eligible for. Army leaders touted the OPAT as an early success, saying in 2018 that they saw about 10% fewer basic training dropouts.

[James1978]

Top enlisted soldier says NCOs need to ‘be where your boss isn’t’
By Todd South
May 22, 2023

There’s a classic scene, familiar to soldiers many generations, where a senior enlisted leader trails behind the commanding officer, figuratively attached at the hip.

That’s a good soldier, right?

Maybe not anymore.

“You’re probably not enabling mission command if you’re sitting right next to your boss,” said Sergeant Major of the Army Michael A. Grinston on May 16 at the annual Association of the U.S. Army’s Land Forces Pacific Symposium in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Grinston’s “fireside chat” with his immediate predecessor, retired Sergeant Major of the Army Daniel Dailey, took place prior to a panel on the role of the noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Mission command is running military operations through “decentralized execution” based on mission orders, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff definition.

With Army units, even company-level and below, stretched across the widest of distances in this pivotal region, the service’s top leaders have pushed in recent years to put decision-making in the hands of lower ranks.

It’s a move that’s vital for the Army and other military branches to fight a new kind of fight — more dispersed, quicker cycles of reconnaissance, strikes, and counterstrikes. For conventional forces, gone are the days of unchecked air superiority and long-running planning for kill-or-capture missions.

And a big push across all geographic combatant commands requires trusting NCOs both in the U.S. Army and its partners and allies — another message trumpeted and repeated countless times in recent years.

That’s where a senior NCO can play a crucial role, Grinston said.

“Sometimes you gotta be where your boss isn’t,” Grinston said. “What are those things that you can see that he or she can’t see?

That said, the outgoing top enlisted soldier, warned the audience full of chevrons that it doesn’t get easier the further up the ladder one climbs.

“And the higher you go, the harder this gets,” he said.

Part of that function, Grinston noted, is gauging the real motivation of partner or allied forces. Much of that can be measured at the NCO level, he said.

“Do we think they have the will to fight? Because that’s come up a lot in Russia and Ukraine,” Grinston said.

Sergeants and above need to fact check or perhaps gut check what’s happening at lower levels versus what top partner or allied force officers are saying, he said.

Without it, the task is nearly impossible.

Grinston did not mention Afghanistan or Iraq specifically other than to note he worked deployments to Iraq while also balancing duties as a command sergeant major in I Corps, out of Joint Base-Lewis McChord, Washington. But his next comment echoed the experiences of many who served in those two countries over the past decades.

“If the officers in that country don’t trust NCOs, in my experience, you’re just going to be banging your head against a wall,” Grinston said.

And two days later, during another panel challenging myths and misconceptions of land warfare, a two-star Army general’s comments further bolstered the sergeant major’s comments.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Ryan, commanding general of the 25th Infantry Division, based out of Hawaii, put the lessons he learned from Afghanistan bluntly.

“We’ve got to be honest brokers with ourselves in terms of evaluation of reliable partners,” Ryan said. “I think anybody who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan who says they didn’t question the efficacy of the Afghan Army, what we were trying to build there and what we were trying to do, not without intense, incredible, herculean effort, the fact that the partner was overestimated as a reliable partner does not escape me.”

Those questions now linger as the U.S. military works to build reliable partners to counter China in the Pacific.

In the conversation, Dailey synthesized Grinston’s comments into two words: operationalizing trust.

Grinston shared wisdom he’s gained over his nearly four decades in the Army, noting that the larger the group of soldiers, the harder it is to build and maintain trust and, it takes time.

The sergeant major pointed to his own experience, both with U.S. soldiers and with allies.

While previously at the brigade level, he remembered calling down to one of his enlisted soldiers and requesting a staff sergeant for tasking.

“I don’t have any staff sergeants,” the unidentified soldier replied.

“I knew that wasn’t true,” Grinston said.

But rather than shouting out to find someone, Grinston understood that he was new to this brigade and this senior NCO didn’t know him well enough to trust him to use that staff sergeant for something more important than what they were needed for at the battalion level.

“He didn’t trust me to make the right decision,” Grinston said. “And it was up to me at the brigade to fix that.”

In another anecdote specific to partnerships, Grinston referred to the relationship he’s built over years with Sergeant Major of the New Zealand Army Wiremu Moffitt.

“If ‘Mu’ called me from New Zealand and said, ‘I need you to do this,’ if I had to buy my own plane ticket, I would do it,” Grinston said.

But Grinston wasn’t the only senior enlisted leader at the symposium with an opinion on how to work with commanders and allies or partners.

During the following panel on the role of NCOs in the Pacific theater, U.S. Navy Fleet Master Chief David Isom, the senior enlisted leader for INDOPACOM, added another facet to Grinston’s remarks.

Isom agreed, with respect to achieving “buy-in” from partner forces’ enlisted ranks, but said that sometimes being with the boss matters.

“Sometimes efforts are top-down and driven down from the top,” Isom said. “You can talk to NCOs in other countries, and they’re just not empowered at the highest level.”

But often, Isom said, those senior NCOs want to see a change in their forces. They want to have a structure more like the United States military.

Other topics and questions arose during the short chat between sergeants major, but Grinston emphasized a specific point on trust to his audience.

“We have great authority because our officers trust us,” Grinston said. “Never lose that trust. It is fleeting and could go in a second. We are only great because our officers say, ‘You have all this authority and go do that.’”

[/quote]

[James1978]

Army Mulls 10-20% Cut to Special Operations Forces
Lawmakers and Army officials have discussed cuts through decade’s end, including to Green Berets, psyops, and enablers.

By Caitlin M. Kenney
May 22, 2023

The U.S. Army is considering cutting 10 to 20 percent of their special operation forces, according to Capitol Hill officials and a former top commander of the service’s elite forces.

Kenneth Tovo, a retired Army lieutenant general who led U.S. Army Special Operations Command, was asked by Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., at a Senate hearing on Wednesday about “the administration's plans to cut 10 percent of U.S. Army Special Operations Forces” and their likely effect on the service’s ability “to provide combatant commanders with options for great power competition, counterterrorism and crisis response.”

“I think it'll be crippling,” said Tovo, who was speaking before the Armed Services subcommittee on emerging threats and capabilities. “10 percent of the force is going to be a significant—…the higher end is even 20 percent.”

Later, a congressional aide went into more detail.

“I’m told by both mid- and senior-level officials in the Army and special operations that cuts to [special operations forces] are coming. Cuts of at least 10 percent. I say again: at least 10 percent are currently reflected in TAA 25-29. TAA is Total Army Analysis 25-29, which is the Army’s process by which they determine future force structure and inform the budget process,” said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the cuts.

"I’m told that the cuts will be most acute on SOF enablers like logistics and intelligence, but that some changes to force structure are also likely for Special Forces, civil affairs, psychological operations," the aide said.

A second congressional aide confirmed that Army officials were talking with lawmakers and staffers about such cuts but did not say just how deep they might be.

An Army spokesperson, asked about the potential cuts, referred questions to U.S. Special Operations Command.

Kenneth McGraw, a spokesman for U.S. SOCOM, said, “It would be inappropriate for us to speculate on what future decisions might be made about special operations force structure.”

Last week, Gen. Bryan Fenton, commanding general of U.S. Special Operations Command argued in a op-ed in Defense One that the nation’s elite forces that proved to be so valuable for recent counterterrorism wars would be just as necessary for future conflicts and deterrence, saying the United States must “strengthen our ability to contribute to the United States’ contest with great-power adversaries.”

The first aide argued Army proposals to cut end strength are understandable.

“There are very real constraints being placed on the Army, and we understand that, both budgetary and due to the recruiting crisis,” he said. “And changes to force structure are needed both to address those impacts to the overall end strength of the Army and to ensure that the Army can compete with China and Russia, and fight and win America’s wars. But I think we would all prefer that our adversaries are deterred rather than resorting to armed conflict. And competition is happening every day in the grey zone, and that work is primarily being done by special operators who are enabled by both cyber and space capabilities.”

Both staffers said that the Army has not officially told Congress about their end-strength proposals.

“The bottom line is that SOF requirements are increasing, so any loss of capability or capacities for our special operations forces is going to be met with extreme skepticism by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle,” the first aide said.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said at the hearing, “You cannot mass-produce [special operations forces] in a crisis. And we can't get to a point where we're faced with a crisis and we do not have the operators that are able to step forward. So, we really do have to push back against that.”

Tovo said cuts in intelligence enablers would be “devastating.”

“We're a force that is very much driven by our intelligence community,” he said. “And if the cuts are taken there—and that's one of the places that the service I believe wants to take the cuts—that will be devastating. Without the intelligence capability, our operational capability is hobbled at best.”

He also said cuts are likely to affect troops in the Green Berets, psychological operations, and civil affairs, which are “areas where we really can't afford—they are the prime forces for competition.”

“They are the persistent present forces out in the crisis spots of the world who are working with partners and have the ability to do all the things that our last two [National Defense Strategies] have said we want to be able to do to leverage partners and allies,” he said. “And if we take cuts in those, we'll certainly have less capability.”

Once cuts are made, the time it would take to rebuild those forces again is “hard to say, but it'll be measured in years,” Tovo told the senators.

Demand for operators is not waning, and if anything, people in specific specialties are more in demand than what the military currently has. Jonathan Schroden, the research program director for Countering Threats and Challenges at the Center for Naval Analyses, led a recent congressionally mandated force structure assessment that looked into what combatant commanders and the services were requesting for SOF compared to the current force structure.

“We ran a bunch of different calculations, scenarios, etc. One of the common themes in terms of force structure requirements that emerged from those is in almost every scenario we looked at, there was a higher demand for PSYOP forces, for civil affairs forces, for undersea warfare and maritime capabilities, than what the force has today,” Schroden said.

[James1978]

Once given false criminal record, officer now gets promotion, back pay

By Davis Winkie
May 25, 2023

As the Army finishes its review of botched recruiting fraud investigations that branded troops with false criminal histories, the service has awarded a previously denied promotion to an officer who led the charge to correct the errors after they derailed his career.

Now-Maj. Gilberto De Leon was selected for major in 2019. However, because investigators from the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division improperly listed him in criminal databases years before, his promotion was halted after an automated records review found “adverse information.” Even though he’d never been charged and a review board deemed him promotable, De Leon’s promotion eligibility expired in spring 2022 before he could pin on his new rank.

Frustrated, he wrote a March 2022 op-ed for Military Times, and became the public face of thousands of troops whom CID investigated and submitted to criminal databases without arrest or prosecution. Resulting pressure from advocates and lawmakers led the Army to review thousands of cases to identify and correct improper database entries that have upended lives.

Amid pressure from Congress, the agency has completed its review and “will provide a detailed report to Congress within the next month,” said Ronna Weyland, a spokesperson for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.

After his Wednesday promotion, De Leon will receive two years of back pay and medically retire in the higher grade, according to documents he shared with Army Times. But he said he doesn’t believe that’s enough for what he and others endured, which included false arrest records submitted to a Federal Bureau of Investigation database.

“Mere removal of criminal titles and reinstatement of earned ranks does not equate to achieving righteous justice or accountability,” De Leon said in a text message, adding that he wants to see continued scrutiny from lawmakers and “a public apology” from senior leaders. He also criticized the service’s communication with him in a post on LinkedIn, and said he learned from media reports that the Senate had approved his promotion.

De Leon, who was the first-known soldier to be formally cleared in the Army’s internal review of the recruiting fraud investigations, is now the first-known soldier to have its negative impacts on their career reversed.

G-RAP, as it was known while active from 2005 to 2012, paid a private company to employ off-duty Guardsmen as independent contractor “recruiting assistants.” The recruiting assistants received around $2,000 for each new enlisted soldier they referred to Guard recruiters, and the program helped refill the Army National Guard’s ranks during the bloody surge years of the Global War on Terror.

But service officials abruptly ended the program in 2012 when an internal audit identified nearly one in four payments as possibly fraudulent, kicking off one of the largest criminal investigations in Army history: CID’s Task Force Raptor.

The task force’s personnel, many of whom were reservists and recalled retirees, worked fervently — and in some cases, unfairly — under pressure from Congress to find the alleged fraud.

Only 137 people ever faced criminal charges from the investigation. The CID task force, which cost around $28 million, never yielded anything near the $92 million in payments that auditors flagged as potentially fraudulent. Lawmakers pushed the service to find a way to inflict administrative consequences on those who couldn’t face charges due to the statute of limitations or evidentiary problems.

“What tools do you have to make sure that everyone understands that there was punishment here?” asked then-Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., in a Feb. 4, 2014 contracting oversight hearing with Army officials. “Even if they’re not going to prison — even if those criminal statutes of limitations have run — I need to know what else you can do.”

In response, the Army’s top law enforcement officer, Maj. Gen. David Quantock, told the senator that the service has “many administrative tools in the [Army] Secretary’s kitbag” for targeting those they can’t prosecute.

De Leon fell victim to that administrative “kitbag,” despite never being arrested or charged with a crime. Investigators inappropriately added him and as many as 1,900 others to Defense Department and FBI databases.

CID’s director, Gregory Ford, shared data from an initial review of 900 such cases in November. He said the agency found “the majority” of those records were incorrect and required “some form of correction.”

For years, many who quietly received such punishments weren’t aware of them. Then the impacts started appearing in their daily lives — Guardsmen who worked as police officers lost their jobs, others had weapons permits and other state licenses denied, and a handful of officers had previously approved promotions derailed.

That’s what happened to De Leon, who was first recommended for promotion in 2019.

An impacted contracting officer featured in an April 2022 Army Times investigation, Capt. Justin Tahilramani, was administratively denied his promotion to major as well despite having passed strict ethical and background checks to enter the service’s Acquisition Corps. He was entered into criminal databases (but never arrested or charged) over three G-RAP payments he received for Texas cadets who enlisted after he gave a presentation on the benefits of joining up.

Officials knew about his G-RAP involvement when vetting him to award and administer government contracts.

“It was vindicating to know that they saw past it,” Tahilramani told Army Times last year. “They saw me for what I brought to the table.”

Now, despite CID formally clearing him and removing his incorrect entries from criminal databases, he’s no longer on active duty. He left because the administrative burden of fixing his records was pushed onto him, he explained, and he was concerned that the Army would scuttle his second chance at promotion and involuntarily discharge him for failing to promote.

“Add[ing] to the insane irony,” Tahilramani told Army Times, “I got hired back as a fully remote contracting officer for Army Contracting Command...[whose leadership] has stood by my side and have bent over backwards to support me.”

But it’s still not clear whether his military records will be fixed as De Leon’s were. So far, Tahilramani said he’s received “no word on the status” of any promotions.

[James1978]

Army Secretary to Remind Commanders They Can't Deny Soldiers' Parental Leave

26 May 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth plans to issue a servicewide reminder that soldiers are broadly entitled to parental leave and that the time off can be denied only by a general, according to an unsigned draft copy of the memo reviewed by Military.com.

The memo comes after Military.com in recent months interviewed two soldiers who say their unit broke service rules by denying their parental leave or otherwise making it difficult, or having them jump through unnecessary hoops when the new leave is effectively guaranteed. Other soldiers have also raised similar complaints on social media in recent weeks.

Company-level Army leadership has virtually no authority over whether new parents can take the 12 weeks of leave.

In both situations, the two soldiers who spoke to Military.com had to go back and forth with leadership they say did not understand the policy. Commanders or noncommissioned officers forced the soldiers to delay the leave or break it into shorter portions so they could still participate in training or other duties, the soldiers said.

One spouse of a soldier told Military.com in April that they "would not have challenged" their command's decision to withhold or significantly delay parental leave "due to a fear of retaliation."

The spouse said the soldier was prepared to accept whatever the service offered, whether it was in line with regulations or not.

The Army unveiled its new parental leave rules in January, following a law passed by Congress that mandated each service grant its formations 12 weeks to spend with their newborn or adopted child.

However, the Army took it a step further than all the other branches, making it so only the first general in a soldier's chain of command can deny the leave. The only exception is that a soldier's request to take the leave in portions, instead of all at once, can be denied.

In other services, the denial authority is vague or leaves it up to company-level leaders, a power that senior Army officials did not want to grant to relatively young leaders who may have lower thresholds for emergencies. The parental leave is also in addition to nonchargeable maternity convalescent leave, which is typically six weeks of recovery time for the birth parent.

"Parental leave is intended for soldiers to care for their child or children," Wormuth's draft memo says. "Soldiers who give birth, non-birth parents, and soldiers who have a minor child or children placed into their home for adoption or long-term foster care are authorized 12 weeks of parental leave, which may be taken in one or more increments.”

"Parental leave is in addition to and following a period of maternity convalescent leave for the birth parent," the secretary wrote.

The new policy is among the hallmarks of Wormuth's tenure, which has largely centered around quality-of-life issues. The new leave was a significant move toward promoting work-life balance across the force. The Army relies heavily on families and the potential for a new generation of recruits when those children grow up.

The service has some 400,000 parents across its active-duty and reserve components, according to Army data. At any given time, roughly 6,000 soldiers are pregnant, and presumably many more are expecting children with their partners.

The move to solidify 12 weeks of parental leave for men and women is comparable to the civilian sector, where the length of parental leave has been steadily increasing, and comes at a time when the services are struggling to bring in new talent. The new rules are an especially big change for men in the service, who previously were eligible for only three weeks of convalescent leave if they were not the primary caregiver.

"If we don't have the best people and we don't take care of our people, it won't really matter -- even if we develop the most amazing new weapon systems and technologies," Wormuth said during an Army town hall last year, summing up the service's thinking. "People are the backbone of this Army, and we have to take care of our folks."